Shadow Play (The Twilight Zone, 1959)

"**Shadow Play**"
"Shadow Play"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 2; Episode 26
Directed by	John Brahm
Written by	Charles Beaumont
Based on	"Träumerei"; by Charles Beaumont
Production code	173-3657
Original air date	May 5, 1961
Guest appearances
	Dennis Weaver as Adam Grant; Harry Townes as District Attorney Henry Ritchie; Wright King as Paul Carson; Bernie Hamilton as Coley; William Edmonson as Jiggs; Anne Barton as Carol Ritchie; Tommy Nello as Phillips; Mack Williams as Father Beaman; Gene Roth as Judge;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "The Silence"	Next →; "The Mind and the Matter"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 2)
	List of episodes

"Shadow Play" is episode 62 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on May 5, 1961 on CBS.

Opening narration

Adam Grant, a nondescript kind of man, found guilty of murder and sentenced to the electric chair. Like every other criminal caught in the wheels of justice, he's scared, right down to the marrow of his bones. But it isn't prison that scares him, the long, silent nights of waiting, the slow walk to the little room, or even death itself. It's something else that holds Adam Grant in the hot, sweaty grip of fear, something worse than any punishment this world has to offer, something found only in – The Twilight Zone.

Plot

A jury finds Adam Grant guilty of murder, and the judge sentences him to death. Grant laughs with despair, then exclaims that he refuses to die again. He frantically tries to tell those present – including district attorney Henry Ritchie and newspaper editor Paul Carson – that he is dreaming, and if he is executed they will all cease to exist. Locked up on death row, Grant describes the experience of dying in the electric chair, to fellow prisoner Jiggs in graphic detail.

Later, a drunk Carson shows up at Ritchie's house. He has been speaking to Grant, and fears the convict might be telling the truth. Ritchie's wife Carol, annoyed by Carson's outburst, goes to bed early, telling her husband that there are steaks almost ready in the oven. Carson argues to Ritchie that their lives seem impossibly perfect, and encourages him to explore his own doubts.

Back at the prison, Grant waits for Ritchie to arrive, noting the implausibility of Jiggs having a watch to tell him the time. Ritchie comes, and they have a conversation Grant has claimed to have had before with other DAs, enough times to mouth the man's words as he says them. Ritchie asks Grant why he cares about dying if it's all a dream, and Grant explains that he's tormented by having this same nightmare every night. As Ritchie leaves, Grant tries to prove that they're in a dream, by predicting that the steak Ritchie's wife had cooked will be something else. Ritchie rushes home, and finds a roast in the oven.

Jiggs suggests to Grant that he try to get a psychiatric exemption from execution. To prove his sanity to Jiggs, Grant points out logical errors accepted as normal by those around him, such as the fact that his trial, sentencing and execution are happening on the same day. Meanwhile, at Ritchie's home, he and Carson wait for midnight, debating the likelihood that the execution time matches the one shown in movies.

As Grant waits to be taken to the electric chair, Father Beaman visits him. Grant vaguely recalls him as a real priest who died when he was a boy. He further remembers that Carson is really the young priest who replaced Beaman, but struggles to place Ritchie. Carson finally persuades Ritchie that either Grant is right or he's insane, so he calls the governor for a stay of execution. But the call comes seconds too late, Grant is executed, and the world blinks out.

Grant finds himself back in the courtroom. He is being convicted and sentenced to death for murder, again. The same people surround him in the courtroom, but their identities and roles have changed: Jiggs is now the judge, Carson is the jury foreman, Phillips is Grant's public defender.

Closing narration

We know that a dream can be real, but who ever thought that reality could be a dream? We exist, of course, but, but how, in what way? As we believe, as flesh-and-blood human beings, or are we simply parts of someone's feverish, complicated nightmare? Think about it, and then ask yourself, do you live here, in this country, in this world, or do you live, instead, – in The Twilight Zone?

Production notes

Although no source material appears on screen, the episode is likely adapted from writer Charles Beaumont's short story "Traumerei" (which roughly translates from the German as "daydream" or "reverie") which originally appeared in the February, 1956 issue of Infinity Science Fiction. Beaumont's teleplay features passages taken wholly and unchanged from his earlier story.^[1]

Adaptations

This episode was remade under the same title as part of the 1980s series in which Peter Coyote played Adam Grant.

It was also adapted for radio under the same title as part of The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas in which Ernie Hudson played Adam Grant.

References

^ Prejean, Jordan (2014-09-25). ""Shadow Play"". The Twilight Zone Vortex. Retrieved 2018-05-06.

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links

"Shadow Play" at IMDb

[1] Prejean, Jordan (2014-09-25). ""Shadow Play"". The Twilight Zone Vortex. Retrieved 2018-05-06.

[1]

v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"